Before the game was one minute old, Connecticut had three turnovers.
There were many more to come. Passes that flew almost randomly out of bounds. Balls flying everywhere except where they were supposed to. And perhaps the only reason the No. 3 Huskies don't have their first losing streak since 1993 is because the opponent was simply overmatched.
Kelly Faris scored 15 points, and UConn survived a round of sloppy-ball Wednesday night, bouncing back from a rare conference-opening loss to beat Georgetown 75-48 in a game that included 45 giveaways.
''Right after the opening tip, it got sloppy,'' UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. ''The first five possessions were a disaster, I thought. Things that I'm just not accustomed to. I was actually dumfounded. I had no idea that I could ever see some of the things that I saw in those first five minutes of the first half, and it kind of set the tone.''
Faris also had five steals and four assists - and four turnovers. Stefanie Dolson had 13 points - and seven turnovers. Breanna Stewart added 12 points and 13 rebounds, and Bria Hartley scored 12 points for UConn (13-1, 1-1), which fell out of the No. 1 spot in the rankings after a one-point loss to Notre Dame on Saturday.
With the win, UConn has 707 straight games without consecutive losses. The Huskies have also beaten the Hoyas 28 consecutive times.
''Sloppy,'' Faris said. ''It spilled over into the second half as well. We've got to take care of the ball as a whole. We had way too many turnovers, and that killed us. We didn't get to the line as much as we wanted. We didn't rebound like we should have.
''Yeah, we won, but this is not the way we like to win.''
UConn committed 19 turnovers, one shy of its season-high, while Georgetown had four players commit five or more toward its season-high total of 26. The true statistical star of the game was the Huskies freshman Moriah Jefferson, who said she stopped over-thinking and had a career-high seven steals and no turnovers in 27 minutes.
''If I play nervous, it's not good for me or the team,'' Jefferson said. ''So tonight I just tried to come out and play a little bit different from what I've been doing.''
Sugar Rodgers was a one-woman show with 23 points and five turnovers for the Hoyas (10-5, 1-1), who haven't beaten the Huskies since 1993. Hounded all game by UConn's defense, Rodgers went 8 for 22 from the field.
''They're going to hold her, they're going to faceguard her, they're going to run her over, they're going to take three, four people to guard her,'' Georgetown coach Keith Brown said. ''But Sugar keeps proving how good she really is.''
UConn raced to leads of 12-2 and 28-11, yet the Hoyas threatened to make a game of it when Rodgers scored nine points in an 11-3 run that pulled Georgetown within single digits.
But Faris hit a 3-pointer at the first-half buzzer to put the Huskies ahead 38-23 and provided a taste of things to come in the second half, when UConn resumed the rout by hitting six 3s in just over seven minutes.
Hartley, who started 0 for 7 from 3-point range, made three in a row in 90-second span. Jefferson's 3-pointer made the score 62-37 with 12:50 remaining.
Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, UConn's leading scorer on the season, was in foul trouble early and finished with nine points, only the second time this season she has failed to reach double digits.
''There were stretches in there where we played really, really tough,'' Brown said. ''They're just young. We have to learn, and we're teaching them how to be a better team and to do what we've got to go through these steps, block after block after block.
''This is a hurdle that is out of the way. They probably realize now that UConn is probably human, so that's a good thing. That's probably the best thing that came out of that.''
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